God exists within our time: he will gain new knowledge as time goes on

Contradicts his immuatbility

Everlasting

God exists outside of our time: he will never gain new knowledge as he already knows everything that will ever happen

Contradicting ideas of God relation to time

Eternal

God exists within our time: he will gain new knowledge as time goes on

Immanence

Completely contributing definitions

Transcendance

If God is transcendent, is there any point trying to have a relationship with him?

If God is immanent, then he is also within the evil and suffering in the world

Perfectly good and loving

God must be responsible for evil, sin and suffering if he knows it will happen but does nothing to stop it

God is all powerful

Omnipotence

Savage's Paradox: Could God create a rock he could not lift?

Aquinas said God cannot do what is logically impossible

Can God judge us if he has always known our actions?

Benevolence

Perfectly good and loving

God must be responsible for evil, sin and suffering if he knows it will happen but does nothing to stop it

God is all powerful

Savage's Paradox: Could God create a rock he could not lift?

Aquinas said God cannot do what is logically impossible

Can God judge us if he has always known our actions?

Euthyphro Dilemma: are things good because God makes them good, or if they are good independent of God

Transcendance

If God is transcendent, is there any point trying to have a relationship with him?

Omniscience

God is all knowing

Contradicting definitions

"If you understand it, it is not God." - Augustine

The Ontological Argument

Based on a priori reasoning, argues that God's existence is an analytic argument, which makes it a necessary truth.

Anselm's --By definition, God is a being greater than which cannot be conceived. I can conceive of such a being. It is greater to exist than not to exist. Therefore, God must exist.

Gaunilo used that analogy of a perfect island to show the logical trickery

So if we conceive the most perfect anything then it must exist?

But the analogy of the island is a contingent truth

Hume said that the idea of 'necessary existence' was meaningless

Descartes - I have the idea of God; God is a supremely perfect being; Existence is a perfection; Therefore, God must exist

Kant said that existence can never be a property of anything and therefore is not a predicate

He also said that nothing in the definition can bridge the gap to reality

'God exists' may be true but only tells us about the definition of God rather than the actually existence of God in the world

Ferge said that existence is a second level predicate

The Origin of God

God as a psychological process

Freud saw similarities between neurosis and religious behaviour

He thought that the idea of God came from the superego where sexual trauma had been repressed, such as the

Primal horde theory is that in our ancestors there was a dominant male who was regarded with both jealousy and admiration. When the subordinate males killed him, they were left with ambiguous feelings of guilt and so channeled this into worship. Prayer, sacrifice and totems were used. It became an identity for the group and the longing for a dominant male, a father figure, remains

Jung thought that religion stemmed from the archetypes in the brain and so we were all born with the capability to create an image of God

God as a method of control

Marx thought that religion was a social constrct to ensure control and exercise power as a tool of manipulation as it encouraged satisfaction with life

Durkheim believed that God creates solidarity due to a shared belief system, structure and rules

The Trademark Argument

Like the trademark on an item of clothing, having the idea of God reveals the maker to the creation, God himself to us

The idea of God is innate, placed by him into our minds

Hume as an empiricist said our ideas must come from somewhere and as we have only experience the imperfect and finite, we cannot have the idea of something infinite and perfect